Freedom Line Blog

Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal in an interview with the Daily Caller frames the tax debate in terms both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should use when attacking President Barack Obama’s soak-the-rich economic policies:

“Fairness is a good principle but should not be put ahead of growth,” Moore said when discussing his new book, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America.  “There’s nothing fair about making everyone poor.”

We at CFIF have highlighted labor union leaders’  destructive efforts to force a merger between American Airlines and US Air.  We’ve also launched TalktoYourPilot.com for weary passengers to tweet or post their disgust toward the Allied Pilots Association (APA) union whose sabotage has caused massive inconvenience for innocent American Airlines travelers.  And just last week, the Washington Times ran our commentary detailing APA’s behavior within the larger context of a history of labor union malfeasance.

In those commentaries, we noted the irony of the unions’ merger-mania, considering the fact that US Air has yet to fully integrate the new employees it acquired with its 2005 takeover of America West Airlines, including an ongoing seven-year dispute with pilots over seniority and pay scales.

Now we’re witnessing further confirmation of our point.  Leaders of the US Air flight attendants’ union plan a strike vote beginning October 31, just the latest example of the company’s poor labor relations.   For the second time this year, US Air’s flight attendants rejected a contract offer  that would have at long last placed pre-merger America West members under the same agreement as US Air’s.  Meanwhile, Laura Glading, the leader of American’s flight attendant union, maintains her support of an American-US Air merger.  Disgusted with a leader who pushes a merger with an airline that can’t even resolve its own labor ills, American flight attendants have created a Recall Laura Glading page.

Once again, this illustrates the illogic and abuse that characterizes modern unions’ overreach and destructive behavior.  That behavior continues to threaten consumers, the industry and – as demonstrated by the American flight attendants’ recall effort – union members themselves.

The Cato Institute came out this week with its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and the results are very good for Tea Partiers. The nation’s top five chief executives in terms of fiscal stewardship are virtually all proud limited government advocates who have followed through on their promises of reining in government:

1 (tie) — Sam Brownback (R-Kansas); Rick Scott (R-Florida)

3 (tie) — Paul LePage (R-Maine); Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania)

5 (3-way tie) — Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana); Jack Dalrymple (R-North Dakota); John Lynch (D-New Hampshire)

Lynch deserves some credit for being the sole Democrat to crack the top of the list, but not nearly as much as the Republicans who swept to huge majorities in the Granite State’s legislature and forced the governor to abide by New Hampshire’s “live free or die” ethos.

And the nation’s worst fiscal leaders? Is it any surprise that it’s a cadre of blue state liberals?:

46. Christine Gregoire (D-Washington)

47. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii)

48. Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota)

49. Dan Malloy (D-Connecticut)

50, Pat Quinn (D-Illinois)

The full report is here.

This is not, not, not a prediction, but rather an analysis of where I think the presidential race stands right now. In other words, if the election were held today, this is how I see it.

Right now, I have Obama/Biden getting 237 electoral votes, and Romney/Ryan getting 235, with 66 electoral votes in states I consider true toss-ups. Wow. Could not be closer.

Now, some may fault me for this part of it, but I have Florida leaning Romney rather than toss-up. I’ve always thought Romney would win Florida. On the flip side, I still have Pennsylvania and Michigan leaning Obama, even though I really do think Romney has a shot at nabbing one of them. But his shot at them is no better than Obama’s shot at Florida. Still, in the states where I do have debatable leaners, Romney’s chances for surprises in his favor have 36 electoral votes, vs. Obama’s chances at just 29. So in the iffy leaners, Romney’s chances for growth are greater.

Now, among other leaners, I still think Romney has outside chances of surprising in Oregon, New Mexico, and Connecticut, all of which I place now in Obama’s hands. On the other side, the pro-Romney leaners that are at least long-shot options for Obama are just two: Missouri and Montana. Romney’s pick-up chances in this category are 18 electoral votes, Obama’s just 13. Again, slight advantage Romney.

Now, of the 66 EV toss-up states, here is the breakdown:

Virginia, 13 EV: All along I have thought Obama would pull out Virginia, but things are looking far better for Romney there than I had anticipated. I continue to make this a true, dead-even toss-up. Not even a tiny advantage to either side.

Ohio, 18 EV: If somebody had me in a head-lock and forced me to say how this would go, I’d say Obama, by the slimmest of margins.

New Hampshire, 4 EV: Same headlock, different result. My gut says Romney takes it.

Wisconsin, 10 EV: My head says absolute toss-up, my gut says Romney.

Colorado, 9 EV: I really think Romney will take this one, but I had it as toss-up just to be on the safe side.

Nevada 6 EV: I think Obama will take this one, but the “safe side” analysis applies.

Iowa, 6 EV: Head says true toss-up; stubborn polls say probably Obama; gut strongly says Romney. Put it with VA in the true toss-up category.

Result, of the ones I have labeled toss-ups, if I were to go on a limb, I’d give 24 EV to Obama (Ohio and Nevada), 23 EV to Romney (Colorado, New Hampshire, Wisconsin), and 19 still absolutely unsure (Iowa and Virgina).

So, to do all the math and allocate all the leaners and even the leaners-rated-tossups the way I have done (noting that Romney has slightly more “surprise” chances among leaners than Obama does), we come out to 261 Obama, 258 Romney, with Iowa and Virginia outstanding. Iowa alone would put neither over the top. Virginia would win it for either one. So, if the election were held today, I’d say that whoever wins Virginia will win it all.

But it’s tighter than two peas in a pod inside one of those freezer bags where the air has been completely siphoned out.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

A hat tip to my father-in-law and former flight instructor Grady Conner for sending along a link from Flying Magazine that reproduced the National Business Aviation Association’s response to President Barack Obama’s debate night swipe at corporate jets:

In an open letter to Obama, NBAA head Ed Bolen said the remarks show that the president is out of touch with reality.

“Your comments seemed to illustrate a complete lack of understanding about the importance of business aviation in the U.S., and appear to be at odds with your stated interest in promoting job growth, stimulating exports, driving economic recovery and restoring America to its first-place position in manufacturing,” Bolen wrote.

Bolen was referring to Obama’s response to a question from debate moderator Jim Lehrer about tax policy, in which Obama stated: “Why wouldn’t we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it.”

Bolen first countered those remarks in a statement issued to news organizations before the Wednesday night debate had concluded, which noted that the business aviation industry is responsible for 1.2 million American jobs, and contributes $150 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

For those scoring at home, the 1.2 million American jobs maintained by the business aviation industry dwarf the 300,000 non-farm payroll jobs created since President Obama took office.  (And that’s being charitable.  The CNN fact checkers who determined that number didn’t count government jobs.  If they had, the Obama economy would actually have 400,000 fewer Americans working today than in January 2009.)

As a devotee of stimulus, the President should appreciate that tax breaks for corporate jet purchases help stimulate people to buy such aircraft, which in turn help employ 1.2 million domestic workers and generate $150 billion.

Then again, maybe the President just resents the fact that free people in an open market can do a better job stimulating the economy than government experts.

I had a big story today at the Daily Caller about how Barack Obama first was directly told that the Bush administration was releasing federal money to Louisiana post-Katrina and letting LA use that same federal money as the Stafford Act “match” for the rest of the federal recovery money — in other words, that the locals actually put up not one red cent — but declared himself unsatisfied even with that. THEN he, Obama, voted AGAINST a bill that provided Katrina recovery funds while waiving the Stafford Act. Then, in the now-infamous Hampton University speech, he blasted Bush for not waiving funds that Bush already had de facto waived and that the Senate then had waived while Obama had voted against the bill providing the waiver.

NOW, with Obama as president, he has REFUSED to waive the Stafford Act for LA victims of Hurricane Isaac.

One’s head spins at the multiple hypocrisies.

But now I would like to hash out some details. It is true, as Media Matters has reported, that Obama had voted for an alternative version of the Katrina relief bill that also waived the Stafford Act “match” requirements. The overall bill provided not just Katrina relief but also provided for better military support related to the war in Iraq. Obama voted for a bill that did all that while requring a specific timeline for troop withdrawal for Iraq, and issued a statement saying he had voted against the bill that actually did pass because it provided for no such timeline. But this is not a good excuse; in fact it raises serious questions about his judgment.
Why?

Because Obama’s desired timeline requirement would have been imposed just as the famously successful “Surge” in Iraq was going on and in a key phase. The timeline would have undermined the Surge. And Obama’s holier-than-thou intransigence wasn’t popular even among the anti-war crowd in his own party in the Senate: The bill that passed without a timeline did so by an 80-14 vote, including overwhelming support among Democrats.

Among those liberal Democrats who voted for the bill waiving the Stafford Act, despite its lack of an Iraq timeline, were Joe Biden, Richard Durbin of Obama’s home state of Illinois, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and West Point graduate Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a military procurement expert who had voted against authorizing military activities in Iraq in the first place.

By the time of the vote, of course, Obama was running for president. He was obviously playing up his timeline thing as a sop to the liberal base of his party for presidential primary purposes; while most Democrats, as we have seen, obviously thought it irresponsible to vote against the bill that actually passed just in order to make a point — an ill-timed, indeed dangerously timed point — about wanting to pull the troops home.

In short, Obama’s explanation doesn’t mitigate against the charge of hypocrisy; it just adds irresponsibility on top of the hypocrisy.

Last week Byron York highlighted two important Nanny-state features of Obamacare when it gets fully implemented in 2014:

Administration officials and Democrats in Congress have stressed that Obamacare does not permit the IRS to garnish wages or seize cash and assets from taxpayers.

What they mention less frequently is that the IRS has another way to get the money. About three-quarters of U.S. taxpayers receive refunds after filing their returns each year, with the average refund nearly $3,000. After 2014, those people will discover the IRS can take the penalty out of their refunds.

…

The IRS will also determine who is eligible for taxpayer-financed subsidies to purchase health care on the exchanges that will be set up in every state. Anytime anyone’s situation changes — a raise, a new job, a move to another state — that person will be required to report it to the IRS for the purpose of recalculating their eligibility.

This is not a small group. Obamacare will give tax credits for the purchase of health coverage to people who make up to four times the poverty level — at the moment, that’s $44,100 a year for an individual and $88,200 for a family of four. Those millions of Americans had better keep the IRS informed of their status every step of the way.

So, failure to buy a product that the feds approve of can get your tax refund wiped out, while failure to update your status with the IRS like it was Facebook can get you fined?

These are the kinds of details that need to be hammered home in the upcoming debates by Romney and Ryan so that voters can know what a vote for Obama – and Obamacare – really means.

It’s not an overstatement to say that the Heritage Foundation has done the nation a service with its new video chronicling the Obama Administration’s deceit and incompetence regarding the fatal attack on our consulate in Benghazi:

I’d love to see this turned into an ad aired during the presidential debate on foreign policy at the end of this month.

Michael Barone has a superb column about the serial law-breaking by Barack Obama:

Campaigns aren’t allowed to accept donations from foreigners. But it looks like the Obama campaign has made it easier for them to slip money in. How much foreign money has come into the Obama campaign? Schweizer and Boyer say there’s no way to know.

The campaign, as my former boss pollster Peter Hart likes to say, always reflects the candidate. A campaign willing to skirt the law or abet violations of it reflects a candidate who, as president, has been doing the same thing.

Examples abound….

Barack Obama was a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. But he seems to take the attitude familiar to me, as an alumnus of Yale Law School, that the law is simply a bunch of words which people who are clever with words can manipulate to get any result they want.

In public speeches he has defended such policies by shouting, “We can’t wait!” The results are good, or at least politically convenient, so why be held back by a few words written on paper?

The Constitution was written by men who had a different idea…..

This column has a devastating compendium of examples. More amazingly, much of Obama’s law-breaking has been to implement policies that are or should be unpopular. There’s no good reason for Mitt Romney not to “call him out” on them.

Over at Ricochet, I have my take on the growing meme that President Obama doesn’t really want a second term. My take is different: he wants it all right, but his appetite for prestige and power is tempered by his disdain for the mechanics of the job:

Obama considers it an affront when people fail to accept his brilliance as a given. The man has simply never had to win on the merits. Like most professionals who manage to trade exclusively on personality, he has rocketed to the level of his incompetence. And now, when people actually question him, the sense of righteousness that has calcified around an unchallenged ideology has left him at a loss to construct a rejoinder: how, after all, do you debate someone trapped in false consciousness? Barack is still trying to figure out how to tell us that we’re only staring at shadows on the cave wall.

Read the whole thing here.

Mets fans and Phillies fans in particular might like my American Spectator column today, wherein a Volleyball Mom channels her husband channeling Tug McGraw. Said Volleyball Mom:

And my husband kept saying that we need to be like Tug, that we ‘gotta believe.’ We gotta believe Romney’s gonna win. We gotta believe the country isn’t doomed. We gotta believe the Constitution still matters. Gotta believe, gotta believe, gotta believe. …

And, wrote I:

Ya gotta believe Romney will win because citizens are tired of crushing debt, high energy prices, a large drop in household net worth, and several downgrades of the federal government’s credit ratings.

But Americans believe in more lasting things, and more positive things, than a mere need to stop bad times and bad tidings. We hold dear some noble ideals, noble ideas, and noble aspirations. Ya gotta believe — we gotta believe — in some of the great truths recognized in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. We should believe them not because they are recognized in those great documents, but because they already were truths before the writers of those documents had the wisdom to recognize them, and because they remain true today and always will…..

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Dan Murphy at National Review found another possible debating point for Mitt Romney:

Tucked away in President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal was a little-noticed provision telling Congress that it may need to provide $688 million to cover the FHA’s projected losses this fiscal year. Translation: The FHA will need a bailout for the first time in its 75-year history.

A short-term solution by the Department of Housing and Urban Development covered up FHA’s growing financial problem until mid-November, i.e. after the presidential election.

Mitt Romney should clue-in the American people on this failure before they vote.

Before Barack Obama, America had never seen a trillion-dollar deficit.  Under Obama, we have now endured four in a row.

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced that the deficit for fiscal 2012 totaled $1.1 trillion, after trillion-plus deficits for 2009 (which Obama falsely attributes to Bush), 2010 and 2011.  Keep in mind that Obama originally promised that the deficit would be down to $557 billion this year, in addition to his infamous promise to “cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term.”   Moreover, the expiration date on his all-purpose alibi of the last recession has long since passed, since that recession ended over three years ago in June 2009.

Obama and his media apologists will naturally trumpet this morning’s lackluster jobs report, yet today’s deficit announcement by the CBO provides a broader perspective on his utter, unprecedented failure as president.

Kudos to CNN host Erin Burnett for getting Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter to admit that President Barack Obama’s charge that Mitt Romney is campaigning on a $5 trillion tax cut is just wrong.

From a transcript provided by RealClearPolitics:

Erin Burnett, CNN host: So you’re saying if you lower them by 20% you get a $5 trillion tab, right?

Stephanie Cutter: It’s a $5 trillion tab.

[crosstalk]

Burnett: But then when you close deductions it’s not going to be anywhere near $5 trillion, that’s our analysis.

Cutter: Well, okay, stipulated. It won’t be near $5 trillion but it’s also not going to be the sum of $5 trillion in the loopholes that he’s going to close. So it is going to cost someone and it’s going to cost the middle class. Independent economists have taken a look at this. There aren’t enough deductions for those at the top to account for the number of tax cuts that they get because of Mitt Romney’s policy so you have to raise taxes on the middle class. As Bill Clinton said, it’s just simple math.

Burnett: Okay, they’ll just say that you can do that. There are other studies. I know the one to which you’re referring, but there’s also the possibility of economic growth.

Cutter: Prove it. Erin, prove it.

Burnett: We can’t prove either side, that’s all I’m saying, but the one thing that I can say is not true is the $5 trillion tax cut.

Cutter: I disagree with you. You can prove it. So then they should just say that they’re counting entirely on economic growth to pay for a tax cut. Which is an interesting theory because that is what George Bush and let’s look at how that turned out, we had the slowest economic growth since World War II.

Burnett: They’re not saying entirely, they’re saying closing loopholes and economic growth, both. I understand you disagree with it.

Cutter: But that still leaves you at least a trillion dollars short. The math does not work with what they’re saying. And they won’t name those deductions, not a single deduction that they will close because they know that is bad for their politics. Now look, this is the center, this is the core of Mitt Romney’s economic policy. Last night, he walked away from it, said he didn’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. He does. That’s what lowering the rates amounts to.

Don’t confuse them with the facts!

Enough is enough.  It’s time to shine a brighter spotlight on pilot union attempts to sabotage American Airlines.  That’s why CFIF is launching TalktoYourPilot.com – to ensure that travelers know who’s to blame for their frustrations.  No surprise – it’s the pilots’ union, the Allied Pilots Association (APA).

From time to time over the last five months, Jeff Mazzella, Renee Giachino and I have written about the APA’s antics.  You can read most of those things here or read my op-ed in the Washington Times.  In those commentaries we’ve made each of the following points:

–          The airline industry has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, forcing every single legacy carrier to reorganize under bankruptcy.  American was the last to do so, holding out until last year.  The cause was simple: With the highest labor costs in the industry (bar far), American needed to do something to become more competitive.

–          Accordingly, American went about negotiating with each of their nine separate labor unions, representing flight attendants, mechanics and pilots. Eight of those nine unions ratified new contracts to help their employer and provide stability for their members.

–          The lone exception of those nine unions?  It was the APA – the primary pilots’ union. The APA rejected a generous offer that included pay raises and an equity stake valued at $187,500 for each of the 8,000 union pilots (13.5% of the company’s value).

–          At the same time, the APA used US Airway’s CEO, Doug Parker, to improve their leverage with American.  The APA cut a deal with Parker in case American and US Airways were to merge – even though Parker’s own US Airways pilots have gone seven years without a contract. (Parker has said that everyone will have their cake and eat it too if he combines the airlines.  That’s unrealistic and disingenuous, but it’s a matter for a different day.)  For more on this, read my interview in the Phoenix Business Journal.

–          Ultimately, if American’s pilots stubbornly refuse to accept a new contract, they could effectively send their employer, or perhaps the entire airline industry, the way of the auto industry.  The difference this time would be that taxpayers won’t be so enthusiastic about bailing them out.

Words are no longer enough. Thousands of travelers have been disrupted by the holdout pilots’ union, and we want to afford those inconvenienced travelers an opportunity to give the pilots a piece of their mind.  That’s why we built TalktoYourPilot.com – to give consumers a chance to tell the pilots to settle their disputes without inconveniencing the rest of us.

If headlines earn a vice presidential candidate’s stripes, then Joe Biden may merit consideration as Mitt Romney’s most effective attack dog.

A few days ago Biden said the middle class has been “buried” during President Barack Obama’s economic stewardship.  Today, Obama’s self-immolating Vice President confirmed Mitt Romney’s charge that the Democratic incumbent would raise taxes if reelected:

Biden said Romney and other Republicans often say `Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.’ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.”

It’s true Biden is gaffe-prone, but these kinds of statements are too true to be unintentional.

Watch yourself, Paul Ryan – Good Ole’ Joe is gunning for your job!

H/T: Fox News

Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner flagged a disingenuous statement from the AARP after President Barack Obama’s disastrous debate performance last night:

President Obama invoked AARP to defend his health care law last night, prompting the influential group to release a statement telling him not to do that again.

“While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” the group posted in a statement. “AARP is a nonpartisan organization and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party.”

The statement is disingenuous because, as I argued in a recent column, AARP stands to gain $2.8 billion if ObamaCare is implemented; an event foreshadowed in an email from a top AARP executive to the White House in 2009 that said, “we will try to keep a little space between us” on health care because AARP’s “polling shows we are more influential when we are seen as independent, so we want to reinforce that positioning…The larger issue is how best to serve the cause.”

AARP already made its choice.  If it wants its money, the group must support its patron, no matter how unpopular he is becoming.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.